viral love
by fallen-chan
Summary: chip by chip, falling apart piecemeal. His death was a slow one, drawn out over months. His death was a quick one, over long before the fire died. •ℵ• AU •ℵ•implied Ita/Shi


**Disclaimer:** I own no one. apart from, perhaps, the unnamed characters.

**A/N:** written for the minific fest at bitter_nakano on LJ

**Summa****ry:** chip by chip, falling apart piecemeal. His death was a slow one, drawn out over months. His death was a quick one, over long before the fire died. •ℵ• AU •ℵ•implied Ita/Shi

* * *

He starts to die when he returns from a mission one day and smells acrid smoke in the air, sees ashes in the wind and freshly-drawn seals in the stone of the wall surrounding the clan compound. _A virus_, the people whisper in the streets, blatantly staring with open pity in their eyes, gossiping mouth covered by a hand as they lean toward a neighbor. _It was too contagious_, the owner of the small grocery on the corner of the street tells him, drawing him into the air-conditioned store and pressing a paper bag of tomatoes into his hand. _Your little brother is in the hospital_, the man continues - only, there is no one to listen to his words.

The lobby of the hospital is cool and empty. Dried blood flakes from his hand onto the white-washed counter and the secretary hurriedly hands him off to a nurse that reeks of antiseptic. She peels off latex gloves smeared with fresh blood and draws him away from the lobby, pats his hand apologetically and tells him "Uchiha Sasuke is too sick to see any visitors, but I'll tell him you visited."

Uchiha Itachi is ushered out of the hospital holding a brown paper bag full of tomatoes exactly fifteen minutes after he first walks in. Uchiha Shisui meets him outside, pausing just long enough to flash him a tired smile before grabbing his hand and using _Shunshin_ on them both. They both sneak into the last row of _jounin_ as the Hokage clears his throat and his cousin squeezes his hand once before letting go quickly. The man next to him leans over and whispers his "condolences for the loss of your family" but Shisui very pointedly clears _his_ throat and his eyes flash red for a moment. The man draws back and his cousin takes his hand once more, pulls him closer toward the end of the line, away from everyone else.

He sleeps restlessly until Shisui's hand curls around his own and his cousin crawls into his bed and wonders, vaguely, why he cannot bring himself to believe that his entire clan - save for two teenagers and a young boy in the hospital - is now dead from "what must be a grievous failing in the security of the village, if a _nuke-nin_ was able to inflict such horrible damage before perishing himself."

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

He stops by the hospital the next day, after a letter arrives in the mail, and a different nurse leads him up the stairs to the fifth floor, past a set of double-doors and down a long windowless hallway until they stop before a closed door, a window at eye-level and an _iryo-nin_ standing beside it, blood smeared on his white jacket. _He's in critical condition_, the man says in an undertone, wringing his hands in an uncharacteristic gesture of nervousness. "Uchiha-san, there's something I need to discuss with you..."

Shisui meets him at the door of their new, shared apartment. His cousin takes one look at his face and tugs him inside, closing the door deftly with his other hand before drawing them both into the dark living room. The paper bag of tomatoes is set on a table somewhere between the door and the couch. His _hitai-ate_ falls to the carpeted floor and he lets his cousin push him onto the couch, fingers cold against his skin. "What did they say?" Shisui asks, slipping a hand under his shirt. "You look upset."

Itachi tells him between shallow breaths, fingers digging into the cushions; Shisui slips off the couch and dips his head and looks up with dark sympathetic eyes that bleed from red to black to red again and tells him later, voice only slightly breathless, that it is an absurd suggestion and "of course you shouldn't listen to him, Itachi-kun, he's your _brother_."

Uchiha Itachi goes back to the hospital with Shisui at his side and he tells the _iryo-nin_ "no."

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

The world dissolves into chaos. He wakes before dawn one day and there is ANBU at the window with a summons from the Hokage; he arrives and there are _iryo-nin_ at the door scanning everyone before they are allowed to enter and the room is full of loud whispers when he walks in, all eyes on him as soon as he steps past the doorway. _His brother_. someone whispers to a neighbor, voice pitched just loud enough for him to hear. _I heard he refused to let the kid die peacefully, that's why all this happened_, someone else chimed in.

The Hokage arrives in a flurry of red-and-white robes and cuts the whispers off with a cough and Itachi barely registers Shisui's late arrival, his cousin's hair mussed and windswept. Three nurses dead. Two injured. One _iryo-nin_ dead, one injured. His cousin's presence is a solid wall against the stares and whispers (_they do not call him 'prodigy' now; with the Hokage there, they do not vocalize it but Itachi can see the silent accusations in their eyes, read it in their bodies_).

He is one of the last to leave. The Hokage stops him with a hand on his arm and tells Shisui that there is no problem, he simply would like to "discuss certain matters with Itachi-kun. Alone."

Itachi returns to their apartment before he reports for duty and checks the refrigerator for the paper bag - _Sasuke's_ _bag_ - of tomatoes.

The _kunai_ in his hand are cold and heavy when the creature that was once Sasuke sees him and starts to shamble toward him, reaching for him with a raised hand. He fancies that somewhere in the creature's shriek when _kunai_ thud into its chest and a _Katon_ jutsu sets it on fire, he hears Sasuke calling his name plaintively.

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

Uchiha Itachi leaves a trail of equipment from the door to his bed and he falls asleep with his face buried in the pillow, a crumpled ripped picture of Sasuke in his hand.

Their numbers fall every day. Itachi wakes up from an uneasy nap one day and the latest news circulating is that _the_ Hatake Kakashi is infected too and he can still use his _Sharingan _eye and some of his _jutsu_, unlike all the other victims. The rest of is day goes downhill from there, each report more depressing than the last. Shisui pulls him aside at lunch and there is a fevered look in his eyes; his cousin whispers into his ear that there is something important he must see. Before his cousin can continue the alarm sounds and his world shatters into fragments of fighting, desperate shouts mixed with dying shrieks, the smell of fire and ash and rotting flesh heavy in the air.

The Hokage holds another meeting of the remaining _jounin_ and _chunin_ and ANBU that night; the remainders of Danzo's _Ne_ shinobi filter in as well, ghosts in the shadows that go unacknowledged unless they are called upon. (_No one likes to think about Ne, the puppet-shinobi without a master after Danzo died, taking the Hokage's councilors with him.)_ He sees Inuzuka Tsume across the room; grief has left her face drawn taut (_a daughter dead, a son infected - and she killed him herself, didn't she?)_ and she broaches the subject of the _genin_ and Academy students, the children just waiting to be picked off now that the infected are starting to retain their ability to use _jutsu_ and bloodline limits.

Pandemonium erupts. Somewhere in the commotion, voices screaming and shouting across the room, Shisui grabs him by the wrist and tugs him toward the door. "You know what they're going to do in the end" his cousin breathes into his ear bitterly. "There's something you have to see, Itachi-kun."

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

The walls and bars of the cells practically glow with the chakra residue from the seals layered on them, one after another until Itachi can not see a single inch of untouched wall or metal. "This-"

The words die in his throat; the smell of rotting flesh chokes him but his eyes bleed from black to red once more and he sees the jars, neatly stacked on shelves against the far wall. Pairs of bloody-red eyes, _tomoe_ swimming in the iris, float inside each of them. He thinks he can recognize some of the free-floating eyes; the pair in the jar to the far right of the third shelf up belong to Yashiro, the old officer in the Military Police Force who never did like him; the pair to the far left of the shelf belong to another of the police and _there_, on the top shelf -

Shisui grips his arm with a white-knuckled hand and guides him out of the room until his sudden bout of nausea dies, because those are his _parents'_ eyes, proudly displayed in jars in the center of the top shelf. He wonders, as his cousin rubs his back and presses a kiss behind his ear, if Sasuke's unawakened eyes would have joined those floating in the jars, if -

"Hey, you feeling better now?" Shisui tugs him back into the room and leads him over to a desk shoved into a corner of the room, away from the cells full of creatures chained to the wall. "Itachi-kun, I think you should read this."

Uchiha Itachi bends awkwardly over the low desk and starts from the first page of the thick stack of bound papers. Five pages in, his eyes bleed to red.

Twenty pages in, Shisui gives him a side-long glance and smiles a tiny smile, hidden behind his hand. Twin pinwheels spin in Itachi's eyes.

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

Four months after the virus first spread through the Uchiha clan compound, Konoha burns. Very little news from the rest of the continent reaches the village now; the little they do know suggests that Kiri, at the very least, is already overrun by the infected, the virus borne by refugees fleeing from Konoha. Shisui suggests to Itachi, in an undertone, that Sunagakure is probably overrun by the infection as well; the heat would cause the infected bodies to bloat and eventually explode , he continues after another messenger runs in with an update on a new outbreak of infection near the abandoned Hyuuga compound. They both know the virus is spread by bodily fluids; Itachi draws a black "x" through Sungakure on the map hanging from the wall in wet ink.

Itachi watches his cousin leave through the door and idly wonders why Shisui has a tendency to smell like antiseptic now; they have very few _iryo-nin_ and no working hospital, not after the original was demolished following the initial outbreak caused by Sasuke (and his breath catches in his throat still, because that was his _brother_, his innocent little brother they stole away and infected with the byproduct of an infection perfected on _his family_). His fingers curl around edge of the table and his eyes flash red before he reminds himself that there is little he can do to change the past (_but oh how they screamed, the old withered man who was once Hokage and the iryo-nin who smiled in his face and told him "I'm sorry; there's nothing else we can do for him"_).

He tells the young _chuunin_ standing by the door that he will be overseeing the demolition of the Hyuuga clan compound and the subsequent hunt. There is a small scrap of paper on the floor, one that curls black at the edges and threatens to crumble when he stoops to pick it up and experimentally tries to bend it. He can not read the fragments of sentences, cut off in the middle of unfamiliar words.

Itachi makes a detour on his way out of their temporary headquarters, leaving the scrap of paper with Ibiki and the only surviving Nara. He doesn't think about it again, not until one of the few Hyuuga still alive comes to fetch him one night, one of Danzo's old _Ne_ shinobi tagging along behind him (_recycle the old, the useless, until they make something of themselves again_).

He tells Shisui he won't be long; his cousin offers him a sleepy smile and a yawn, curling into the blankets and stealing his pillow. "Don't overwork yourself, Itachi-kun" Shisui tells him before burrowing his face into the pillow.

Thirty minutes later, Itachi clenches his hands until his nails dig into his palms and draw blood, pinwheel-eyes spinning, and wonders which of the gods he offended in a previous life.

The scrap of paper curls in black flames.

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

He sits on the edge of the bed and his hand hovers over a pale throat he knows well; the fading bruise at the junction where neck meets shoulder was his work. His hand trembles, fingers curling reflexively; he blinks and pulls away and his teeth dig into his lip until he tastes blood.

It should be easy. _This_, he tells himself, _is the reason why you have no brother. _He flexes his fingers and watches the play of the muscle beneath skin; it would be easy - _elementary_ - to reach out, to curl those fingers around that neck and squeeze and squeeze until the man (_not a man, _he tells himself yet again_. because what man would destroy the world twice over for nothing?_) - until his _cousin_, until _Shisui_ - died and dark bruises mottles his neck.

Uchiha Itachi tells himself that he is almost 13 now; he is a _shinobi_, the last true remnant of his clan. He tells himself he will not cry.

He pulls on the sheets when he stands and crawls onto the bed until he is kneeling over his cousin, hands resting on the pillow on either side of Shisui's head. His cousin wakes easily, blinks sleepily once before the haze clears from his eyes. Itachi knows that Shisui can feel the _shinobi_ surrounding them, waiting just outside the walls, outside the closed door. He knows that Shisui knows what he has discovered when his cousin seems to shrug and gives him a tired little smile, eyes bleeding from red to black.

_"You found out, Itachi-kun?"_

He stares down at his cousin and his eyes melt into the _Sharingan_ and Shisui is still _smiling_ when his hands wrap around a slender throat, completely at ease.

_"Why did you do it?"_

His cousin is still smiling when his hands tighten and his fingers press down on arteries and compress the airway until he is staring down at empty eyes and blue-tinged lips and no pulse flutters against his fingers.

_"The clan. We deserved to live."_

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

He carries Shisui's body out of the room and ignores the _shinobi_ watching him warily, whispering about him behind raised hands. Itachi wonders, idly, what they think his role in the entire affair was. He doubts they will ever give him the same trust (_but it does not matter, does it? his world was always small and it went from two to one and now there are none_).

He carries Shisui's body to the top of the Hokage Monument and his eyes are _Sharingan_ red, black pinwheels spinning as he sets the body down on top of the Sandaime's head and takes seven steps back.

Itachi watches his cousin's body burn to ash in black flames. His eyes fade from the cursed pinwheels to _tomoe_ when he raises a hand to his face and his fingertips come away bloody.

Seven days later, the last of the fire is flickering slowly, dying.

Uchiha Itachi smiles and his eyes match the red of the sunrise as he takes seven steps forward.


End file.
